“I’m here to inquire about a former resident of Pottsville! A man named Cameron Tramell.”

“Never heard of him,” I said. “Good-bye.”

I started to close the door, Barnes held it open.

“You’ve heard of him,” he said. “He was known locally as Curly, and he was a pimp.”

I said, oh, I said, oh, yeah, sure, I’d heard of Curly. “Ain’t seen him for a spell, come to think of it. How’s he getting along, anyways?”

“Now, Sheriff”—he grinned at me with his eyes— “let’s not spar with each other.”

“Spar? What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean, Cameron Trammel, alias Curly, is dead, as you well know. And you also know who killed him.”

20

I had him come in, and we sat in the living room while he explained about Curly. It seemed that both bodies had been washed up, Moose’s as well as Curly’s. But no one was interested in Moose, whereas they were plenty interested in Curly. And the people that was interested in him was his own family, one of the best families in the South. They knew he was no good, naturally; in fact, they’d paid him to stay away from ‘em. But still he was “family”—still part of ‘em—and they meant to see to it that his murderer was hanged.

“So here I am, Sheriff . . .” Barnes forced a smile. “Perhaps we didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but, well, I’m not a man to hold a grudge, and I’m sure neither of us wants to see a murderer running loose.”

“I know I sure don’t,” I said. “If I see any murderer runnin’ around loose, I’ll arrest ‘em and throw ‘em in jail.”

“Exactly. So if you’ll tell me the name of the man who killed Curly . . .”

“Me?” I said. “I don’t know who killed him. If I did, I’d arrest him an’ put—”

“Sheriff! You ‘do’ know who killed him. You’ve admitted it.”

“Not me,” I said. “‘You’ said that I knew, not me.”

His mouth pinched together again, and his eyes along with it. With that fishhook nose, his face looked like three clods on a sandbank with a plough cutting through them.

“Approximately one week ago, on the morning after Curly was killed—”

“Now, how do you know it was the morning after?” I said. “Ain’t no one can say that unless it was the fella that killed him.”

“I know this, Sheriff. I know that your friend, Sheriff Ken Lacey, openly boasted on the streets of this town that he had taken care of Moose and Curly, meaning he had killed them. And you were with him at the time of this boasting, this claim that he had murdered those two men, and you gave your hearty approval to it.”

“Oh, yeah,” I laughed, “now I remember. That was a little joke of Ken’s an’ mine. Had ourselves a peck of fun with it”

“Now, Sheriff—”

“You think it wasn’t?” I said. “You think that a fella who’d killed two men would walk around the streets braggin’ about it, and that I, an officer of the law, would just pat him on the back for it?”